Seven female students have won a total of 28 posts in the Dhaka University Central Students’ Union (DUCSU) elections. Out of 12 editorial posts, female students have won 3 posts. And out of 13 member posts, female students have won 4 posts.
DUCSU election Chief Returning Officer Professor Mohammad Jasim Uddin said that the number of voters was 39,874. 29,821 people voted. Out of these, 12,453 women voted. The voter turnout was 74.78 percent.
Voting was conducted on Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) sheets. In the DUCSU (28 posts) and Hall Sangsad (13) elections, a voter had to cast a total of 41 votes. A total of 62 female candidates received 133,105 votes in the DUCSU and Hall Sangsad elections.
In addition, five female students were candidates for 65 posts in the Hall Sangsad elections. 185 women were candidates for 61 posts in the Hall Sangsad elections. DUCSU and Hall Sangsad combined have won 72 women.
Voting for DUCSU and Hall Sangsad elections was held from 8 am to 4 pm on Tuesday. The final results were announced on Wednesday morning. The panel of Jamaat-e-Islami’s student organization Islami Chhatra Shibir, the United Students’ Alliance, won 23 of the 28 DUCSU posts. The Shibir panel won all three posts – Vice President (VP), General Secretary (GS) and Assistant General Secretary (AGS). Although women contested these three posts, they could not win.
Among the editorial posts, Sanjida Ahmed Tonbi was elected as an independent candidate for the post of Research and Publication Editor. She received 11,778 votes. Several panels, including Chhatra Dal, did not field a candidate for this post in support of her. The main competition with her was the Shibir candidate. Shibir’s candidate Md. Sajjad Hossain Khan came second with 7,189 votes.
Shibir’s panel candidate Fatema Tasnim Juma won the post of Liberation War and Democratic Movement Secretary with 10,631 votes. Her closest rival, Chhatra Dal’s Ariful Islam, received 2,470 votes. Shibir’s panel candidate Umme Chalma won the post of Common Room, Reading Room and Cafeteria Secretary with 9,920 votes. Surmi Chakma of the Independent Students’ Unity Panel came in second with 4,482 votes.
The four women who won the post of member are Shibir’s Sabikun Nahar Tamanna (10,084 votes) and Mosha Afsana Akhter (5,747 votes), Resistance Council’s Hema Chakma (4,908 votes) and independent candidate Umma Uswatun Rafia (4,209 votes).
This time, 62 out of 471 candidates in DUCSU were women, which is 13 percent of the total candidates. There were 18 candidates from minority communities and small ethnic groups, which is only 3.82 percent of the total candidates. Two of them were elected. And five were female students. There were 185 candidates for 65 seats in the parliament. Of these, 14 were from minority communities.
Hema Chakma, a candidate from the ‘Resistance Council’, a panel of seven left-wing organizations elected as executive members in the DUCSU elections, told Prothom Alo, ‘I did not think I would win the election. Later, when I criticized or protested the statement that the Chakmas did not contribute to the liberation war, attacks began against me. A candidate from the Shibir panel spread such propaganda against the Paharis. I held a press conference criticizing it. After that, my posters were torn down, and I was constantly bullied in the cyber world.’
Sanjida Ahmed Tonbi, who won the post of Research and Publications Editor by a huge vote in the election and was injured in the July mass uprising, expressed her reaction on the social media Facebook. In a post on Facebook yesterday, he said that he will do his utmost to earn the trust of voters.
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